Recap of Front-end Development in 2017

• HTML 5.2 is done.
• It was a banner year for Vue.js in terms of adoption and popularity. No question about it.
• The great divide between a front-end HTML & CSS developer v.s. front-end application developer is realized/verbalized.
• Being a Front-end JavaScript developer who builds applications using web technologies continues to get better and worse.
• This year seemed fuller than most of app/framework solutions trying to contend with the mainstream JavaScript app tools (i.e. React, Angular, and Vue etc...) Let me list them for you. Moon, Marko, Hyperapp, Quasar Framework, POI, frint, BunnyJS, jsblocks, Sapper, Stimulus, Choo,
• This was the year that jsbin and jsfiddle evolved to things like StackBlitz and CodeSandbox. Making it dead simple to share a working app.
• React continues to be flattered by things like preact, inferno, nerv, dva, and rax.
• Cheatsheets got organized with devhints.io.
• We figured out that the correct pattern for an app boilerplate/cli tool is something very opinionated like Create React App with the ability to escape from it when needed.
• Most developers found that the combination of a really good code editor, eslint, and now prettier make writing code faster, easier, pleasurable.
• CSS Flexbox and Grid gain browser support and thus more developers are paying attention to both.
• We get, a headless chrome, finally.
• You no longer need Less or Sass to do amazing things with CSS.
• CSS revolutions/revolts are under way.
• JavaScript object explorer tools have arrived, JavaScript Array Explorer and JavaScript Object Explorer. This is a handy interface pattern for learning about JavaScript data types (e.g. Objects and Arrays) and their methods.
• The Chrome web browser dominates the market and people begin to fear the past might be repeating itself.
• Brave becomes the most pleasant and safest way to browser the internet.
• PhantomJS is no longer maintained, Headless Chrome and Puppeteer step in.
• Prettier comes from left field and becomes a staple for development.
• A whole lot of JS developers adopt bolted on static type systems for mostly subjective reasons or band wagon emotions. Some sell out completely to Typescript and the Microsoft way of doing things while others take on a slower approach with Flow. One thing is for sure, most developers don't need a bolted on type system, they are simply complicating already complex problems and solutions. Like most things, most of this trend is subjective dogma not objective value (Languages with built in static type systems are a different matter).
• Static site generators & API CMS tools aka Headless CMS's are now on most developers radar.
• Web components still lurking and wait for significant traction by developers that might never come to be.
• JavaScript settled and CSS erupt and everyone will cry fatigue by this time next year.
• A lot of people stop doing CSS in CSS and move to CSS in JS when building application using component trees.
• Yarn seems to have filled a need, because a lot of people jumped the npm ship. However, the real value of Yarn is the fact that it brings competition to NPM. Making npm better.
• A new video format for Interactive coding screencasts (recording of working in a live editor that you can edit too) becomes a real thing with Scrimba.
• Most people begin to see the correlation between component architectures and atomic design.
• And so it begins that ES modules will be part of the browser and if used a backup plan will be required (i.e. a bundle from something like webpack).
• MVC frameworks are on the outs.
• Developing and displaying React components outside of your applications is made popular by tools like Bluekit, Storybook, React Styleguidist, and bit.
• Getting a front-end job in 2017 is about experience, which is displayed from personal projects and a developers Github account.
• Preloading resources (CSS, JavaScript, Media etc..) from HTML documents arrives.
• Cypress arrives as a complete testing solution and hopefully testing will get better as end to end testing becomes the focus for app code.
• WebAssembly support now shipping in all major browsers
• Webpack dominates, and then competitors show up.
• React 16 aka fiber is released.
• React begins to rival jQuery in popularity in certain contexts.
• React clearly is the most used tool for building UI's with state.
• Facebook sheds its React BSD license for the MIT license (same for Jest, Flow, Immutable.js, and GraphQL)
• GraphQL got hot in 2017.
• Facebook continues to take charge in the development space with forthcoming tools like prepack.io.
• As expected ECMA-262 edition 8 is released.
• React Router finally stabilizes.
• All modern browsers pretty much now support ECMAScript 2015 (aka ES6).
• Async JavaScript functions start getting some serious attention and usage. Mostly because all modern browsers now support Async functions.
• Mobile development, still too hard. A strong rebellion advocating the web platform as a solution to the pain gained momentum this year.